Each year students from LCF’s Fashion Business School collaborate on a cross disciplinary project with UK retail giant John Lewis. 1st year students from BA (Hons) Fashion Buying and Merchandising, BA (Hons) Fashion Marketing and BA (Hons) Fashion Visual Merchandising and Branding work together in teams to answer a brief set by the brand. This year’s brief was to identify a current gap in the menswear and create a capsule collection to address it. The students worked in 14 teams and earlier this month presented their ideas to an industry panel led by LCF alum Nick Keyte, Head of Menswear, Sport and Travel at John Lewis with one team winning overall. Six students, two from each course, were talented spotted by the John Lewis team and will each receive a week long work placecement with the brand and one lucky student, Jennica Chiang, earning a year long mentorship with Nick, starting in her 2nd year.
LCF News asked BA (Hons) Fashion Marketing student Holly Freer, who was part of the winning team ‘Kameo’, to tell us about the experience.
Team ‘Kameo’ with School of Management & Science Development Director Dan Henderson
“The John Lewis project was an amazing experience. The project gave LCF students the opportunity to work alongside John Lewis’ own team and create a capsule collection for their menswear department. Identifying a gap in the market, we were to incorporate fresh and innovative ideas."
"Working as a group is always very rewarding, to adapt to others learning styles and sharing ideas. Being able to work across the courses was even more so! It was so interesting to learn how a Visual Merchandiser approaches a task and how, as a Marketer, it was important to bear their work in mind when creating your own. It gave us an honest experience of, not only working alongside others, but how the industry works. I was fortunate to have been grouped with 12 amazingly talented students from BA(Hons) Fashion Marketing, BA(Hons) Visual Merchandising and BA(Hons) Buying and Merchandising and we formed the brand ‘Kameo’. Our brand name was derived from a chameleon, the way in which an animal can adapt to its surroundings and the idea of change. We wanted our brand to grow with technology and evolve with time. Our target customer was identified as a metropolitan man, who is very technology aware and shops online a lot."
"As a marketing team (Katie, Elissa, Shenique, Sofia, Karoline and myself), we really pushed the idea of using social media and were really creative on Photoshop creating visuals for our campaign."
"It was so exciting to be able to communicate with John Lewis’ marketing team and present to them our own ideas. To get such a positive response about something we had brainstormed ourselves was so rewarding."
"The collection itself was clean, yet original. Using a thermochromic pigment, we used a technology that allowed the garment to change colour when body temperature was applied. Known as Hyperkolour, the pigment was applied to accents of the garments; for example the collar of a jacket or the neckline of a t-shirt. With innovation and technology in mind, our VM team (Dana, Taavi, Lola and Sophiya) incorporated the Hyperkolour technology into their shop windows. Painted onto polystyrene coral, the figure changed colour with the application of heat and displayed the ‘show stopper’ jacket using multi-sensory technology. It made us all feel so proud to see our brand unite across all 3 disciplines and the freedom to explore new ideas was so much fun! It was an absolute privilege to have been selected for the final, and an honour to have been chosen by John Lewis as the winners. There were some amazing ideas and concepts across all 14 teams. As a team, we were so overwhelmed that our hard work had paid off and so proud of what we had created. We would like to thank the John Lewis mentors and LCF tutors for their guidance, and also for this opportunity. Not only have we learnt so much about the industry, but have made great connections for the future.”
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